Anna Deavere Smith Quotes
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Suddenly in high school, I'm in a predominantly Jewish atmosphere. Jewish people were my gate to white America.
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Friendship is a wildly underrated medication.
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Probably the person who said the only color in Los Angeles is green was right.
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My main concern is theater, and theater does not reflect or mirror society. It has been stingy and selfish, and it has to do better.
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I mean, I think that - as an actress, in particular, I'm basically a fool, and I see the world upside down.
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I'm interested when things are upside down - because there are so many possibilities in that one moment. There is a lot that is exposed.
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Well, the terrible thing right now, and I don't know the statistics, but there's a growing concern in some communities about how rapidly people are sent from school to jail, how quickly they're put into the criminal justice system. And of course the rapidly growing number of brown people, both men and women, in prison. And this is terrible.
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Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.
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I think that art is supposed to be ahead of the times.
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I see myself as not a typical theater person, but a person who uses the theater as a place to meet people and explore ideas.
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I think we need leadership that helps us remember that part of what we are about is caring about more than the person right next to us, but the folks across the way.
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I never know when somebody's going to knock on the door of my own unconscious in a way that I wouldn't have anticipated.
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Movies, as evidenced by a chorus of protesting and celebrating Americans, influence broader trends.
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Artists are the people that no matter what, pick up the pen, pick up a paintbrush. They take the time to translate what is happening to create something that resonates deeply with the rest of the people that are caught in the middle of their own reality.
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Because of the generation in which I came into the world, there were expectations. Of course there were expectations. It was something having to do with being a respectable Negro woman who would make the people in Baltimore proud.
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Identity is an assemblage of constellations.
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You hang around actors, or dancers, the minute you sneeze, everybody has a remedy, and we're all on a million different kinds of diets, and different kinds of things that we do for exercise.
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I think a lot of L.A. is something like USC - this incredible white culture living in the midst of color, and no obvious reaction to it at all. I mean, they have guards at the gate at USC - guards at the gate of a major university! And the guards chase young black boys away - I've seen it, chasing 8-year-old boys.
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Somehow we can't live outside the politics of race. There's something very deep in all of us, that is taught to us when we are very, very little. Which is the disrespect and fear of the other.
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I see myself first and foremost as a student of expression.
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Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor.
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If you think about what acting is supposed to be, my job is to disappear.
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I think as a kid I always liked to listen to people. I loved hearing stories.
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That artists are called to be more responsible and 'true' is a tip of hat to their power.